TCM's 2017 Classic Film Festival

TCM's 8th annual Classic Film Festival is set for April 6 - 9 in Hollywood, and this year's central theme is Make 'Em Laugh: Comedy in the Movies...if there was ever a year we needed some laughs...

Joel McCrea, Claudette Colbert and Rudy Vallee in The Palm Beach Story

Among the comedy classics to be screened are two of my favorites from writer/director Preston Sturges, The Palm Beach Story (1942) and Unfaithfully Yours (1948), with Rex Harrison and Linda Darnell. Also on the program: Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), Born Yesterday (1950), The Front Page (1931), Red-Headed Woman (1932), Harold Lloyd's Speedy (1928) and Twentieth Century (1934). A special presentation, Beyond the Mouse: The 1930s Cartoons of Ub Iwerks (2017), will feature several rarely seen short animation films by Iwerks, an early collaborator and partner of Walt Disney.

VINTAGE YEARS

The notion that 1939 was the greatest of all movie years has been around for so long that it's pretty much an accepted fact these days. A while ago, as I was roaming the blogosphere, I happened upon a post by Peter Bogdanovich on his Indiewire blog (appropriately called Blogdanovich) titled "The Greatest Year?"  I read on, having always respected what Mr. B has to say about films and filmmaking. He not only possesses an encyclopedic knowledge and intimate understanding of the subject, but has also made some classics of his own that I much admire - The Last Picture Show (1971), What's Up, Doc? (1972) and Paper Moon (1973).

With "The Greatest Year?" Bogdanovich looked back on one of his 1972 columns for Esquire magazine. In that article he'd selected and reviewed a great movie year of the past to illustrate his contention that films of the early '70s weren't measuring up. He zeroed in on 1939 in particular because in addition to the fact that it had been a banner year for movies, it was also the year he was born (as were Francis Coppola and William Friedkin, two other major filmmakers of the time). Not long after Bogdanovich's column appeared in Esquire, he recalled, a lengthier, more elaborate piece on the films of 1939 appeared in Life magazine written by film critic Richard Schickel. Schickel once and for all declared '39 to be the great year. The rest, as we know, is history.